A friend just sent me a post by a rdfolland who describes how his (?) sister fell ill in 2001with a wide range of symptoms including neurological and within a year ended up in a wheelchair. MS was a possible diagnosis. On answering yes when the sister asked if she consumed "Aspartame", the sweetener in diet foods and drinks, she was told to stop. She recovered quickly from aspartame poisoning and left her wheelchair behind. This corresponds to my idea that a "toxic" substance can compress the blood vessels sufficiently to force blood into the brain resulting in neurological damage diagnosed as MS. I believe Aspartame "caused" her MS in this sense. It probably can "cause" any number of health problems. (The FDA approved Aspartame under political pressure by the Reagan administration. Scientific research indicated it might induce brain tumours, that it caused cancer in rats.)